---
title: "Alpine set up for daily driver"
date: 2022-12-10
tags: ['alpine', 'linux']
---

## Disable secure boot

First, always check for secure book. If it is enabled you won't be able to boot
your thumbdrive.

## setup-alpine
On the official wiki[^1] there a more complete guide on how to setup, and will
probably be more accurate than this one, so always refer to that wiki first.
This is more a log of how I setup. 

Once you boot your live installation run `setup-alpine` and follow the steps:

* _Select keyboard layout_: **us**

* _Select keyboard variant_: **us**

* _Enter system hostname_: **gridx.local** [This is my choice, if you don't know
  what exactly is this go for the default **localhost**]

* _Which one do you want to initialize?_: **wlan0** [I chose wlan0, since it is
  a laptop I don't have it connected to cable]

* _Type the wireless network name to connect to_: **\<NAME\>**

* _Type network key_: ******

* _Ip address for wlan0_? **dhcp** [and for the following device I have chose
  none since I won't use them anyways]

* _Do you want to do any manual network configuration_? **n** 

* _Changing password for root_: ******

* _Which timezone are you in?_ **Europe/Berlin**

* _HTTP/FTP proxy URL?_ **none**
* _Which NTP client to run?_ chrony
* _Enter mirro number?_ **f** [I pick this one to speed up things a bit, default
  one is fine as well]

* _Set an user?_ **\<NAME\>** [Since we aiming to be a desktop create your user here]

* _Full name for user \<NAME\>:_ **\<FULLNAME\>**
* _Type password_: ******

* _Enter ssh key or URL for \<NAME\>?_ **none** [this is a public key so you can
  ssh into this machine]

* _Which ssh server?_ **openssh**

* _Which disks would like to use?_ **\<DISK\>** [now you are going to set up the
  disk for installation]

* _How would you like to use it?_ **crypt** [I like to use encrypted disks, I
  strongly advice for it, but in case you don't want, go for sys directly]

* _How would you like to use it?_ **lvm**

* _How would you like to use it?_ **sys** [more info[^2]]

* _WARNING: Erase the above disks and continue?_ **y**

* Enter passphrase for \<DISK\>: ******

Once you have finish the step run `reboot`.

## Desktop environment

Now comes the "hard" part, where we need to configure the desktop. For me, I'm
going for i3wm with lightdm.

To be able to install all the necessary packages we will need to enable the
community repository[^3]. To edit it I use vim

```bash
apk add vim
# then
vim /etc/apk/repositories
```
and uncomment the `.../community`

```bash
#/media/cdrom/apks
http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.16/main
http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.16/community
#http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/main
#http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/community
#http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/testing
```

Then run  `apk update` and you will see the both repositories printed out.

Now we will install the necessary drivers for `xorg` to run properly. Firs
search for all  video drivers `apk search xf86-video*` and install whatever you
have for you computer (in my case `apk add apk add xf86-video-amdgpu`)

Add required mesa drivers:

```bash
apk add mesa-dri-gallium mesa-va-gallium mesa-egl
```

Alpine provides a command to install required packages for xorg 

```bash
setup-xorg-base
```

Now to set the `lightdm` and its required dbus setup:

```bash
apk add lightdm-gtk-greeter
setup-devd udev
rc-update add dbus boot
rc-update add lightdm boot
apk add terminus-font
dbus-uuidgen > /var/lib/dbus/machine-id
rc-update add dbus
```

Now for the i3wm:

```bash
apk add i3wm i3status xterm i3lock
add user <NAME> input`
add user <NAME> video`
```

## Extras 

There is a list go command that I use that may be helpful:

``` bash
apk add perl bash fzf           # required for things to work
apk add fish                    # shell
apk add zathura-pdf-poppler     # pdf viewer
apk add ranger                  # file explorer
apk add alpine-sdk make git go  # some dev tooling
apk add qutebrowser             # browser
apk add keepassxc               # password manager
apk add aerc                    # mail
```

## Wiki

There is a more complete from the alpine wiki[^4], which will give more context
to the commands.

[^1]: https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Installation#Questions_asked_by_setup-alpine
[^2]: https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Installation#The_general_course_of_action
[^3]: https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Repositories#Enabling_the_community_repository
[^4]: https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Setting_up_a_laptop